Creating Your Hot Center – Step 1: An Alignment of One
It starts with an alignment of one. You.
Jim Stein
Published Date: May 19, 2023
Quality Customers are a key aspect of your company’s Hot Center. Once they join the center, their powerful voices help define your brand meaning.
You are the absolute center of your company’s Hot Center. Look inward to expand outward. The hotter the center, the more it attracts Quality Customers to your company.
In this step, you’ll articulate your company’s most important Values and Principles. You need to get this on paper. Download and use the Hot Center Worksheet as a guide in the Tools section. You need to do this by yourself as a first draft, with no one else in the room.
If you already have your company’s Values and Principles in writing, now is a good time to take another look and refresh any that need an update. To create yours now, answer these two questions.
1. From your heart, what are the 3 – 6 most important values of your company?
What’s most important to your team and how they work with each other and customers? These values are never broken. Use one or two words per value. Examples: Quality, Customer Satisfaction
2. What are the 5 top principles guiding your team to consistently provide high-quality work and good customer experiences?
These are your high-level rules of the road—the way your company operates. Team members can look to these and make good daily decisions because your principles signal “the way things are done here.” Examples: “We are passionate about customer loyalty,” or “We operate with good margins.”
Words on paper or lived truths?
Your job is to give daily meaning to your company’s Values and Principles. Lead by example. Use your heart—it takes great passion and willpower to create the hottest of centers. If you’re totally clear about how your company operates (its rules for the road) and totally committed to taking daily action to deliver on it, you will succeed in creating the Hot Center that’s needed to fuel your company with Quality Customers.
You’ve finished Step 1 if you’re now holding a first draft of Our Values and Principles in your hands. This isn’t a final. You’ve created these from your own heart and head. You’ve started with an alignment of one. With this exercise done, you’re now ready to expand your Hot Center to include your team as they help you revise and improve this document.